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What happens when the local feels like the outsider, and the foreigner feels at home?

In this episode of Rooted and Routed, Sabiya sits down with Dieter Withoeck, her husband, a Belgian who has lived in India for nearly two decades, and a returning guest from Season 1. Together they unpack one specific tension: the difference between collective and individualist societies, and how the two of them have quietly ended up on opposite sides of it.

Dieter pushes back on the assumption that Belgium has "no family culture," and explores what family and social connection really look like in Europe versus India. From there, the conversation turns to something far less talked about: the difficulty of returning to your own country after years away. Dieter returned to Antwerp after eleven years and felt like a foreigner in it; Sabiya, the local, has felt the reverse. They discuss why "going home" is so much harder than people assume, what reintegration asks of NRIs coming back after a decade or two, and how their children inherit that in-between.

The conversation widens into the fast-changing India that returnees now meet, and the wave of Belgian companies arriving across food, beer, chocolate, agriculture and technology, much of it built and adapted locally rather than simply imported. Along the way: India's developing airports and seaports, shifting tastes, the sensory shock of arriving in India for the first time, and Dieter's own "49% Indian" sense of belonging.

And to close, something lighter, imagining a festival that blends Belgian and Indian traditions, and a shared hope for the day India plays in a football World Cup.

A conversation about belonging, return, and the truth that home isn't a fixed place; it's something you negotiate.

Follow the show and share this episode with someone living between two cultures.

Follow Dieter on LinkedIn:

linkedin.com/in/dieter-withoeck-57887928

Rooted and Routed is a global mobility and cross-cultural storytelling podcast hosted by Sabiya Pathan Withoeck. New episodes every week.

Follow the show:
Instagram: @rootedandrouted
LinkedIn: Rooted and Routed
YouTube: @rootedandrouted
Website: https://www.rootedandrouted.com

Follow Sabiya:
LinkedIn: Sabiya Pathan Withoeck

For guest collaborations, sponsorships, and media inquiries:
info@rootedandrouted.com

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Visibility without values is just noise.

Ketaki Tanaji Golatkar returns for Part 2 of our conversation on Rooted and Routed — and this time, the lens turns from identity and belonging to the work itself. After 21 years across global communications, diplomacy, and international sport, including heading Global Comms for the International Cricket Council, she has spent the last year mentoring women across 108 countries through career pivots, first-time entrepreneurship, layoffs in midlife, and the quiet work of starting over.

This is Part 2 of a two-part episode.

Listen to Part 1 first if you haven't — Ketaki's journey from Bombay to London to Germany to the UAE, and what 22 years of living between worlds taught her about home, identity, and being a woman of colour in rooms built for white men.

In this episode, we explore:

- Why visibility without values is just noise, and what most personal branding conversations refuse to name
- What "performed authenticity" actually looks like, and why authenticity has become one of the most overused, abused words of our time
- What makes a brand or a leader truly brave, and the cost of taking a stand when the board, the investors, and the markets all say no
- Why virality isn't the goal — resonance is
- The unique challenges BIPOC women face in owning their narratives, and the cultural conditioning that tells South Asian women not to talk about their work
- Why nobody tells a 40-year-old woman who's been laid off to start a business
- Grief, divorce, parenting an aging parent, and what reinvention teaches you that conventional success never can
- What it means to lead a crisis with both soul and structure
- Why so many PR people thrive under pressure, and the hardest thing for a comms specialist to do (turn the spotlight on themselves)
- Imposter syndrome, single life by choice, child-free by choice, and what it looks like to build a business as your own boss after 40

About the guest:
Ketaki Tanaji Golatkar is a global communications leader, personal branding mentor, and the founder of Good Day PR and Strategic Communications. Over 21 years, she has worked across agencies in Bombay and London, led a diplomatic project marking 60 years of Indo-German relations, and spent a decade in sports broadcast and governance — including heading Global Comms and PR for the International Cricket Council. She has mentored women across 108 countries and is based in the UAE.

Follow Ketaki Tanaji Golatkar:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ketakigolatkar
Instagram: @ketaki.golatkar

Listen and subscribe to Rooted and Routed wherever you get your podcasts — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube.

What words has the world taught you to repeat — about authenticity, about success, about visibility — that don't quite hold up close? I'd love to hear your story.

Rooted and Routed is a global mobility and cross-cultural storytelling podcast hosted by Sabiya Pathan Withoeck. New episodes every week.

Follow the show:
Instagram: @rootedandrouted
LinkedIn: Rooted and Routed
YouTube: @rootedandrouted
Website: https://www.rootedandrouted.com

Follow Sabiya:
LinkedIn: Sabiya Pathan Withoeck

For guest collaborations, sponsorships, and media inquiries:
info@rootedandrouted.com

If this episode resonated, the most meaningful thing you can do is share it with someone who'd love it — and leave a rating on your podcast platform of choice.

Every share helps this conversation reach further.

Send us Fan Mail

Ketaki Tanaji Golatkar is a global communications leader, a DEI advocate, and the founder of GoodDay PR and Strategic Communications. She has worked across agencies in Bombay and London, led a diplomatic project on Indo-German relations, and spent a decade in international sports — including heading Global Comms for the International Cricket Council. In this episode, she joins Sabiya for a conversation that moves between the boardroom and the deeply personal — what 22 years of living abroad teaches you about home, identity, and the rooms women of colour are still fighting to be heard in.

This is Part 1 of a two-part episode. Part 2 releases Sunday, 10 May.

In this episode, we explore:

- What "home" really means when you've lived in four countries — and why values, not geography, become the thing you carry
- The difference between being an expat and being an immigrant — and why the same person can feel one in Dubai and the other in Germany
- How leaving India is often what teaches you to see it clearly — casteism, colourism, body shaming, and the things that stay invisible until you step outside them
- Why the song "Saare jahan se accha" quietly shapes how Indians see the rest of the world — and what it costs us
- The global beauty industry built on women hating their bodies — from fairness creams in India to the Botox shops on every Dubai corner
- What it takes for a woman of colour to be heard in rooms built for white men — and the cost of working twice as hard to not be called a "diversity hire"
- Why so many women in leadership pull the ladder up behind them — and the scarcity mindset that keeps women small
- What it really means to leave a 21-year corporate career and build something of your own after 40
- The difference between being in the room and being at the decision-making table
- Why the people who get heard are the ones with the audacity to speak in rooms that don't welcome them

Follow Ketaki Tanaji Golatkar:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ketakigolatkar
https://www.instagram.com/ketaki.golatkar/

Rooted and Routed is a global mobility and cross-cultural storytelling podcast hosted by Sabiya Pathan Withoeck. New episodes every week.

Follow the show:
Instagram: @rootedandrouted
LinkedIn: Rooted and Routed
YouTube: @rootedandrouted
Website: https://www.rootedandrouted.com

Follow Sabiya:
LinkedIn: Sabiya Pathan Withoeck

For guest collaborations, sponsorships, and media inquiries:
info@rootedandrouted.com

If this episode resonated, the most meaningful thing you can do is share it with someone who'd love it — and leave a rating on your podcast platform of choice.

Every share helps this conversation reach further.